Founding Feminists: December 9, 1909

American suffragist Alice Paul has been freed from London’s Holloway Prison!

Denied “political prisoner” status, she began a hunger strike immediately after her arrival at the jail, and was force-fed twice a day after 11 November. Though quite weak from her ordeal, she said today that she had no regrets, and would engage in such tactics again if necessary.

She was arrested on 9 November for taking part in a suffrage protest at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in the Guild Hall. Sneaking in hours before the event began, she and another protester, Amelia Brown, disguised themselves as scrubwomen. They spent the morning hiding, one time coming so close to being caught that a constable’s cloak brushed up against Paul in a darkened area where she was crouching to avoid detection. Whenever she ran into someone, she would ask them for directions to the kitchen. Eventually she made her way to the gallery, and when Prime Minister Asquith paused briefly during his speech, she and Brown shouted: “How about votes for women?”

Paul and Brown were quickly arrested, tried, and sentenced to 30 days of hard labour. Both immediately went on hunger strikes. Alice Paul did no work, and resisted everything the authorities tried to do, even refusing to wear prison clothes. Though not yet recovered enough for a long interview, she did send out this statement today through a friend:

I practiced a hunger strike until November 11th. After that date they fed me twice a day by force, except on one day when I was too ill to be touched. I have no complaints against the Holloway officials. I spent the whole time in bed, because I refused to wear prison clothes. Each day I was wrapped in blankets and taken to another cell to be fed, the food being injected through my nostrils.

During this operation the largest wardress in Holloway sat astride my knees, holding my shoulders down to keep me from bending forward. Two other wardresses sat on either side and held my arms. Then a towel was placed around my throat and one doctor from behind forced my head back, while another doctor put a tube in my nostril. When it reached my throat my head was pushed forward.

Twice the tube came through my mouth and I got it between my teeth. My mouth was then pried open with an instrument. Sometimes they tied me to a chair with sheets. Once I managed to get my hands loose and snatched the tube, tearing it with my teeth. I also broke a jug, but I didn’t give in.

Alice Paul originally came to England to do further study, and to gain more experience in social work, but she became attracted to the militant wing of the suffrage movement here through her acquaintance with Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. She joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, and has clearly been willing to share the risks and penalties of their militant activities.

When she will return to the United States is unknown, but when she does, she could have quite an impact on the suffrage movement there, presently dominated by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which endorses only traditional, non-militant methods for achieving the goal of “Votes for Women.”

David Dismore

David became a lifelong admirer of the suffragists after briefly encountering them in a high school textbook in the early 1960s. Though missing out on that first part of the struggle for equality, he became active in "second wave" feminism through LA NOW in 1974 and has been a full-time feminist, TV news archivist, and women's history researcher at the Feminist Majority Foundation since its creation.